When I'm not teaching
classes or rushing off to meetings, you can find me in
my office in Blackwell Library 129 or at the research
services desk. My hours on the desk are Mondays
10am-12pm, Tuesdays 6pm-10pm, Wednesdays 12pm-2pm,
Thursdays 10am-12pm, and Fridays 8am-10am. Stop by and
say hi! Or if you spend a lot of time online and
want to reach me by IM, my yahoo ID is paisleyr and my
google talk ID is kristaknapp.

You can also get help 24
hours a day, 7 days a week through the Maryland AskUsNow
reference service. Find out more about that
here.

Background information:

Reference sources are a good
place to start your research. What is a reference
source? A reference source is something you consult for
a specific piece of information, not something you read
from cover to cover. Reference sources include
encyclopedias, dictionaries, handbooks, thesauri,
atlases, almanacs, directories, etc. Blackwell
Library's reference collection is located on the main
floor. Consult the Library
of Congress Classification outline to see the call
number area for your topic.

Why can't I
just use Wikipedia, you ask? Well, anybody and their
brother can get on Wikipedia and write whatever they
want, for starters! Plus, there are tons of more
reliable, authoritative sources out there for you to
use. And, I just can't resist sharing my favorite
Colbert Report clip about the downfalls of Wikipedia.
View it here (and please ignore the brief commercial at
the beginning!):

Students often have a hard
time getting started with research because coming up with
appropriate search terms can be a big challenge. Sometimes
researchers try to use terms that are too broad and they get way
too many results, and other times terms that are too narrow may
not yield any results at all. Your professor has
recommended this list of keywords to help you get started.
You can add the name of a company, industry, country, war,
ethnic group, or whatever your topic is focused on to some of
these terms for more relevant results.

conflict resolution

peace education

leadership development

conflict
transformation

organizational
development

intercultural conflict

conflict management

dialogue

cross cultural conflict

environmental
conflict

collaboration

intercultural communication

dispute management

consensus

social psychology

dispute settlement

consensus building

peace studies

negotiation

Finding
books:

Find books in Blackwell
Library using our online library catalog.
Books in our library are arranged using Library of Congress
Classification.
The books you can check out are located on the second
floor of the library. If you ever have trouble finding
a book you want, PLEASE ask for help at the Research
Desk!

Books from other USMAI
Libraries

You can also borrow books
from any of the USMAI affiliations by selecting the
"choose campus" link at the top of the catalog page and
then selecting "USMAI All Campuses." When you find a
book you want that is not in Blackwell, click the
"request" button and use your ID number to login. You
can have the book delivered to Blackwell within 3 or 4
days.

Books from Interlibrary
Loan/Worldcat

Interlibrary Loan is a great tool that
allows you to borrow a book from libraries outside the USMAI
system. Before you submit a request, make sure that we don't
own the book here at SU or at one of the other USMAI
institutions. If not, you can submit a request through
ILL
Express.

You can also search
Worldcat, which is a huge catalog of materials from
libraries all over the world. If the book you want is in a
library, chances are pretty good you will find it in Worldcat!
If you find the book you want and you know it is not available
at SU or any USMAI campus, then you can click the Find It button
and then request the book through Interlibrary Loan. The
advantage of doing it this way is that you don't have to fill in
all the information about the book!

Ask yourself if you need
scholarly sources or popular sources for your
assignment. Many times, your professor will insist on
scholarly sources. What does that mean? Find out using
this handy-dandy chart from Duke Libraries.

We have several databases
you can use to search for journal, magazine, or
newspaper articles. Some of them only give a citation
to the article, and some have the full-text. Here is a
list of databases you might want to try. WARNING: these
links will only work from on campus. From off campus,
access databases through
Research Port.

MULTIDISCIPLINARY & NEWSPAPERS:

Academic Search Complete
- a multidisciplinary database from EBSCO with a mix
of scholarly and popular resources, a lot of
full-text and Find It links when there is no
full-text available

Looks in all of
our databases to see if the document you want is
available full-text in another of our databases. If
so, it links you to it!

Links you to the
library catalog when we have the item you want in
print or microform.

Links you to
ILLiad (interlibrary loan) so you can borrow the
item from another library if we don't have access
electronically or in print.

The Find It button is
YOUR FRIEND!!!

You can also use the Citation
Linker, another fabulously cool tool. It is useful
when you are reading an article and it cites another article
that looks like it would be super useful for your research.
You plug in the citation information for that article and can
find out how to access it, whether it be electronically,
physically in the library, or through Interlibrary Loan.
It works the same way as Find It, but you don't have to be in a
database.